Noticed that this morning

Even worse

There was a "high value"* investment service, that I can't name because of NDA, that issued its own certificate. They said that was okay, they just told their customers to accept it. So I issued my own certificate, hacked the site (Code Red days) and did some phishing, back before it was popular.

Lloyds TSB Cookies

I have been unable to login to LloydsTSB, without selecting the "Allow Session Cookies" check box (Tools..Internet Options..Privacy...Advanced) since IE7 was installed. I rang Lloyds help desk and was told that they hadn't done any testing on IE7 so couldn't solve the problem. Fact is I use a program called CookiePal to control cookies. Anyway I seem to have resolved the problem by adding mi.lloydstsb.com as an acceptable cookie in the CookiePal program. What surprised me is the number of "non" lloyds cookies that are offered during login. I don't expect my bank to force unwanted ad-cookies onto my system.

Warning overrides toss SSL's security

This "unknown issuer" warning is caused by a simple server configuration error that is trivial for the server administrator to fix.

How sad that a financial institution would advise (and hence train) their customers to ignore this vital browser warning and thereby defeat the security that SSL otherwise provides those users, instead of getting their business partner to correct the server misconfiguration!

These "unknown issuer" warnings are the very same warnings that the browser gives if it is visiting an ATTACKER's web site. Users ignore (and override) that warning at their own peril! Responsible server administrators will do the necessary things within their power to prevent their users from experiencing those errors.